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Even when the Cubs are terrible, it’s easy to get hyperfocused on only the Cubs, and forget that there’s an entire league out there …

A pretty serious brawl broke out in San Diego last night after Zack Greinke hit Carlos Quentin, who took exception to it and charged the mound. Quentin is a whole lot bigger than Greinke, and the result was a fractured collar bone for the Dodgers’ big money starter. It’s unclear how much time he’s going to miss at this point, and the break was on his non-pitching side. The Dodgers just dumped Aaron Harang, but they’ve still got a good deal of pitching depth (Chris Capuano isn’t even in the rotation at this point, and Ted Lilly will come back from the DL at some point). None will replace Greinke’s expected production, but I don’t think this, alone, is a crippling blow.

Quentin said he charged the mound because of the history between the two and because of something Greinke said, but … it was a one-run game and a 3-2 pitch. It’s quite clear that Greinke wasn’t intentionally trying to hit Quentin, and it’s also quite clear that part of Quentin’s game is getting hit by pitches (he leads the universe, and he dives toward the plate). On a first glance, and without more information, this seems like a pretty bush league move by Quentin. (Credit to Greinke, who gives up about 60 pounds to Quentin, for standing in there and doing his best to absorb and re-deliver a body blow to the charging Quentin. He did the absorb part pretty well … )

Ben Badler continues his impressive reporting on the prospect of an international draft over at Baseball America. In his latest piece, he reports that MLB has issued what effectively amount to slot value recommendations (remember those in the old draft system? They were the amount MLB said you should spend on a given pick, although they had no force whatsoever) for international signings in the coming 2013-14 signing period. If that sounds weird, it is a little weird. Each team was assigned four slot values: “For example, the Cubs, who finished with the second-worst record in 2012, have the slot values for No. 2 ($2,873,000), No. 32 ($462,300), No. 62 ($312,200) and No. 92 ($209,700). Each team takes the sum of their four slot values, then adds another $700,000 to get its total bonus pool, which for the Cubs would be $4,557,200.”

For now, though, the slot values have no force, and are just recommendations. In the future, though, Badler speculates that this is a precursor to the probably-coming international draft, which would have four rounds (with free agency thereafter), and this gives us a sense of what the bonus pool slot values would look like in such a draft. Badler says nothing has been decided in this regard, though, including whether the draft could be longer or shorter than four rounds, or whether the slot values would act as they do in the current state-side draft, or if they would be mere recommendations, as in pre-new-CBA draft.

That all said, even these weird, non-forceful slot values for the 2013-14 international signing period have a meaning: the CBA allows teams to “trade” for international signing money, and those trades have to come in the form of a slot value (i.e., you can trade for a specific slot value, not just “$1 million”). Yes, this all sounds very complicated. Read Ben’s piece for more details.

You may remember that MLB recently sued individuals connected to the Miami-based BioGenesis clinic reportedly tied to performance-enhancing drugs, and stars like Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun. MLB did so, according to most theories, so that they could get access to the allegedly incriminating documents for their own investigation. Now, according to the New York Times, we’re learning they’ve tried another approach to getting the documents: buying them. Seriously, MLB really wants to take these guys down.

If I were Greinke I would have tossed my glove at Quentin then ran toward Matt Kemp to handle my “lightweight”. Also ignore the wet spot down my pants.

JulioZuleta

God, Carlos Quentin is an animal. I can’t believe a player could be provoked into being so violent. He clearly has anger problems and needs to be suspended for 50 games. This say A LOT about what type of player, person he is and should follow him around for the rest of time. (trolling Kyle) 😉

DarthHater

You know less than nothing about whether Quentin is an animal. He may very well be a plant, a bacteria, or a fungus. In fact, I rather suspect the latter. 😉

SirCub

Yea, I was thinking more like the lowest, most simplest form of life. Like Archaea or something.

Brian

Brett, I don’t know if someone is hacking on your site again, but getting booted and fictious viruses warnings are beginning to appear when I have BN open and only BN.

http://www.bleachernation.com Brett

I did a quick scan and I don’t see anything suspicious. What does the warning say, and what browser are you using?

MichiganGoat

on my iphone I regularly get booted to the app store to down load “Candy Rush”

Bilbo161

Same thing happens to me on my iPhone.

whiteflag

I have iphone problems too. We need an app!

Brian

Getting the tab recovery and microsoft has found viruses, which in the past has been fake. I have IE9 and McAfee, so we don’t use microsoft anti anything.

http://www.bleachernation.com Brett

Does it give you any names of any files or anything like that? Anything I might use to try and track it down on my end?

Brian

I will keep my eyes open. Most of the time it happens when going into one of the post.

Thanks, guys. I’ll look into this one – I am *not* interested in ads like that.

Wingit

I have been getting knocked out frequently as well. I use IE8. I am not getting any virus warnings though. Next time it happens, it happened twice this morning, I will see if I can get you some info.

Matt G (not garza)

Same thing happens to me on IE7 on my work computer, doesn’t happen on chrome on my home computer. Will try to take a screen shot next time.

hansman1982

For whatever reason, IE doesn’t seem to like BN (or Brett in general) very much. I have similar problems with my IE8 and sometime IE has a problem rendering BN correctly.

I never have issues on Chrome at home.

BluBlud

I agree with Mattingly, Quentin should not be allowed to play until Greinke makes his return.

Cedlandrum

I think that would be fair.

Timmy

This is almost unprecedented, and with such a big and new contract.

Jason

should be a good game on Monday in LA when they play. Matt Kemp was ready to throw down in a boxing match I’m pretty sure last night.

So Quentin charged b/c Grienke hit him in 2009? Really? Stop leaning into pitches if you get upset about being hit.

I have no problem with a pitcher throwing at a guy as long as he keeps it below the shoulders, but come on, that wasn’t intentional at all, most players aren’t even hit by that pitch.

MichiganGoat

Why would anybody square and shoulder check Quentin, Grenkie could have easily jumped to the side and he came charging. He’s actually kinda of lucky that its only his collar bone that is damaged.

Oh and there is no way MLB will suspend him to match Grenkie’s DL time… but its fun to dream.

BluBlud

I know it would never happen, but I think it’s something that the league needs to look at. If a player commits and egregious act that causes injury and forces a player to miss significant time, then the player will be punished for the amount of time the injured player has to miss without pay.

In fact, they can just copy and paste what I just wrote and I wouldnt even consider it Plagiarizing.

hansman1982

The only problem with that is that it could cause a lesser guy who gets into any fracas with a division rival’s key player to be out for a long time with an “Injury”.

Blublud

True, that’s why the better player needs to think twice before causing a confrontation. Players need to weight the situation. If I’m Miguel Cabrera, do I really want to pick a fight with Brent Lillibridge.

BT

If Quentin had put Casey Coleman on the DL for 2 months, my guess is no one would raise an eyebrow (except a few Cub fans). People are freaking out because it’s Grienke, and he makes a ton of money. Which means it’s not the act itself which is the problem, it’s who was affected by it.

Guys are going to fight. Guys should be punished for it. Making Quentin sit out for as long as Grienke is as silly as saying that if Grienke isn’t hurt, then it was OK to charge the mound, and Quentin shouldn’t be suspended. You should be punished for charging the mound, and the punishment should be the same regardless of the outcome of the fight.

DarthHater

Uh-huh. That’s why if you drive drunk and run over somebody’s rose bush, the punishment is the same as if your drive drunk and kill someone.

wvcubsfan

Technically it is. You would still get the same sentence for drunk driving. You’d get the same sentence for running over a rose bush drunk or not. You’d also get charged with murder (or homicide) whether you killed someone with a care drunk or sober.

DarthHater

Okay, my example sucks :-P, but whatever particular crime one may be convicted of, it is common for the punishment to vary in severity depending on the circumstances of the crime. And one of the circumstances that routinely gets considered is how much harm was caused by the offending act. It’s one of the things about criminal law that I have always thought was unfair, but it’s the way the law works, nonetheless.

BT

The circumstances of the crime should not be “The Dodgers paid Grienke a lot of money so you get extra punished.”.

If I was hearing the guy on CSN correctly today, as many times as Quentin has been hit, this is the first time he has ever charged the mound. And while Grienke has hit him 3 times, apparently he nearly hit him either 3 or 6 other times, which is what Quentin was talking about when he said they had “history”. Paul Konerko seemed to agree with him, and said their crap went way back.

Quentin was hit on Tuesday, and knocked out of Wednesday game. Thursday was his first game back. Kemp was thrown at to start Thursday’s game, so the Padres were expecting payback.

Those are all circumstances to take into account.

The point is Quentin should be punished for charging the mound. He shouldn’t be punished extra because Grienke decided to lower his shoulder into him.

baldtaxguy

Yes, some sort of bullfighter move was in order there, maybe with a glove-slap to the head as Quentin passes by. Admirable that he put his head down to meet Quentin, but I agree with the first poster – I run away.

Danny B

Such a shame that pitcher’s can’t throw inside anymore. With the way these jacked-out roid-heads react, it looks like that part of the game is fading fast. Quentin should be suspended for the length of Greinke’s injury.

As for Kemp, I bet all he knows how to do is talk smack. His ego is ridiculous and if he was so “ready to throw down” last night, why didn’t he? I hope he gets his ass beat by newly-signed teammate Carlos Zambrano….yeah I’m gonna call that right now.

Dustin S

We’ll have to thank Quentin for taking the headlines away from the Soler incident. Although next we’ll probably see a Dateline special on the increase of on-field violence in baseball.

EvenBetterNewsV2.0

Why do I get the feeling we are going to be trading Soriano and Cash to the say the Yankees and their #1 slot in the international pool along with a high upside low level Pitcher?

Dale’s Ear

I hope the Dodgers hit Quentin every AB after that. I know they can’t/wont for rules reasons, but there is absolutely no reason for him to be doing that kind of crap in that situation, not to mention he just caused their brand new $147,000,000 investment to miss a significant amount of time. I’m sure he’ll be suspended but if I’m Don Mattingly I’m bringing in my hardest throwing reliever just to put another heater on him.

SirCub

Here, here.

North Side Irish

I was watching the Dodgers feed of the game during the incident and it was amazing how calm and impartial Vin Scully stays during the entire thing. I can only imagine the hysterics Hawk Harrelson would have subjected us to if that had happened to Chris Sale…and we were stupid enough to be listening to Hawk Harrelson.

How would they determine the order of an international draft? Seems kinda unfair for the worst team to have two number one overall picks.

DarthHater

I’m pretty sure that if you merged the international players into the existing draft and kept the existing draft order system, the odds of any team getting the top international player would be the same as if you had two separate drafts with the same draft order in each. Doc would know for sure. Doc?

hansman1982

If you take the square root of the binomial factoral and to the power of the pi ratio factored over the denominatorial fraction.

3% or about once every 97.35223 times. 15 times a draft.

Cubbie Blues

+1

Die hard

What an arrogant form of collusion!! All foreign ballplayers should be free agents until signed–can’t believe their countries would stand silent

DarthHater

A draft system may be collusive as applied to all players, but I fail to see how it would be any more collusive for foreign players than it is for domestic players.

Die hard

This is not Fantasy Baseball— what if the Mexican League held a draft of all MLB players born in USA and offered 3 times in salary to join them? A binding contract will end and the draft could take effect at that time — eventually some good players will jump

Probably most will disagree here, but I can’t see giving Quentin anymore then 3 or 5 games. Did you guys see Greinke’s reaction? He said something to Quentin, and threw his glove aside and took steps foward to Quentin. Greinke is every bit as responsible as Quentin is for his injury. Now I also dont think Quentin should have charged Greinke, but I can understand it, since its the 3rd time hes been hit by Greinke.

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